The media-propagated notion that the Canadian sextet Fucked Up are "saving hardcore" seems silly — I'm not even convinced hardcore needs saving. (Who's put it in peril?) The equally widespread conjecture that Fucked Up have made hardcore "safe" for indie kids is downright asinine. Although the band's rendition of hardcore punk is more diverse and ambitious than the standard, it's also spiritually, politically, and sometimes physically more confrontational in a manner so reflexive that they are, in fact, very dangerous to everyone's sonic complacency, regardless of what T-shirt you're wearing.

Fucked Up themselves have denied that they're saving hardcore. They have claimed to be making it "more palatable" to indie kids, but they were mostly joking.

"We said that tongue-in-cheek, just 'cause of the attention we started getting from indie scenes," says guitarist Gulag, a/k/a Concentration Camp, a/k/a Josh Zucker, over the phone from his home in Toronto. "We started working with more indie artists, just because we wanted to try different things. The punk scene is really inward-looking, so you get a lot of flak when you start working a bit outside of it. Our response to that is to look at indie people at our shows and pretend we're making it more palatable to them. Now we revel in having a foot in as many scenes as possible."

Gulag and lead guitarist 10,000 Marbles, a/k/a Mike Haliechuk, planted the germ that blossomed into Fucked Up in 2001 when they got bored with self-publishing a punk/lit 'zine and redirected their moxie into a band. Gulag was designated lead singer, but during a summer of hopping trains he was replaced by Pink Eyes, a/k/a Damien Abraham, and reassigned to guitar.

For a band who've cultivated a reputation for bat-shit insane live performances, Fucked Up have been scrupulous with their studio endeavors. Their first full-length, Hidden World, didn't appear until 2006, though they'd released at least 25 singles by then and have had many more since. Gulag credits this to an appreciation for the æsthetic and practicality of seven-inches. It also took a while to amass the resources needed for a record on the scale of their beyond-awesome second LP, The Chemistry of Common Life, which sports a whopping 70 instrumental tracks (many of them layered guitars). Gulag says they'll shoot for 200 on their next full-length. Chemistry is oblique enough to confuse and upset purists, but there's an unswerving, corrosive upheaval that's undeniably hardcore. I challenge anyone to listen to "Twice Born" without feeling a compulsion to floor-punch.

The mystical concepts batted about in the band's lyrics have the same energy and anarchy as the music. Some are pure abstractions, some explore Gnosticism, some are morbidly fascinated with Christianity. Gulag: "The spiritual, political, and historical influences are this pastiche of ideas that we'll get fascinated with, so we use them as inspiration." Of course, in true hardcore spirit, some songs suggest that there's actually nothing that can save us — not even Fucked Up (even if they did save hardcore). "We play with those spiritual currents as a way of writing about wanting to believe in something bigger than the reality we're experiencing, living pretty material lives."

Down in the folk trenches with the Old Edison In a messy Allston kitchen, in unison, a mob of about 20 or 30 persons start screaming at the Old Edison. And as is their custom, the Old Edison shout right back. Welcome to a typical Old Edison performance, but please watch your step.

Fucked Up scale new concept heights, eye closure Fucked Up have always relished the idea of screwing with people's heads. Case in point: when Deranged Records issued 2002's "No Pasaran," the first of dozens of 7-inch records by the Toronto band, several indie distribution houses initially refused to stock it.

Tampa re-emerging as a death-metal hotbed People up here in the Northeast normally associate Tampa, Florida, with balmy beaches and snowbirds. But look beyond the sands and the area is the perfect grindcore dystopia: boulevards flanked by miles of strip sprawl cut across a lattice of low-slung houses built on the cheap, monotony punctuated every few miles by hulking shopping centers and big-box plazas.

Cloud Nothings | Attack on Memory With Attack on Memory , the third full-length from Cleveland-based Cloud Nothings, 20-year-old frontman Dylan Baldi approaches new, drastically darker material with the same empty-bottle angst that made his previous releases so appealing.

HOW TO DESTROY ANGELS | WELCOME OBLIVION | March 13, 2013 Whereas the monsters and ghosts of NIN songs can scream in your face and rip you to bits with their fangs, Welcome Oblivion tracks like techno-folk haunter "Ice Age" and the doom-pop jaunt "How Long?" make uncredited cameo appearances in your nightmares until you go insane and eat your own hands.

JOHNNY MARR | THE MESSENGER | February 25, 2013 Going solo is rarely a good decision. For every exception to the rule of who flourishes after unburdening themselves of the half-talents that have been holding them back — Justin Timberlake, for one — there are dozens of embarrassing Dee Dee Ramone rap albums that exist because Joey and Johnny Ramone weren't around to kibosh a terrible idea.

WHAT'S F'N NEXT? BUKE AND GASE | January 29, 2013 Almost every person I've told about Buke and Gase assumes that they'll hate this band, which isn't their fault.

BLEEDING RAINBOW | YEAH RIGHT | January 23, 2013 The only defect of the sort-of-but-not-really debut from Bleeding Rainbow (no longer called Reading Rainbow, possibly due to litigious ire festering under LeVar Burton's genial television persona) is that the Philly foursome merely hop off the launching point forged by Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, and a handful of others from the oft-exalted grunge era.